The Paypers

Afinis is a membership-based organisation that focuses on the rapid delivery of APIs and other financial services standards across the US and globally. The new APIs are:

Account Validation Plus Name: validates the owner of an account, as well as the accuracy of the routing and account number;
Authorise to Initiate Payment: assists a business in providing information and authorisation to a trading partner so the trading partner may process a payment transaction against the business' financial account or virtual card. The API also enables the business to receive a notification when the trading partner has received the payment instructions.

Afinis has been evolving its Account Validation API for some time. For example, organisations participating in Phixius, Nacha's peer-to-peer payment information network, implemented the first version of the API Standard in 2020.

The second API standard, Authorise to Initiate Payment, supports B2B debits, which commonly require payors to visit multiple payee portals and manage different processes. The Afinis API standard allows payors and payees to instantly agree on the terms of each payment and receive real-time confirmation. The API also provides a real-time ACH debit authorisation, as well as a virtual card number authorisation – making it easier for payors to use both payment options and receivers to enable straight-through processed payments.

Afinis releases APIs for account ownership validation and payment initiation